


'Cause You Are Love and I'm Alive

by semi_automatic, twenty_one_plants



Category: BLURRYFACE - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Trench - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Bandito, Bisexual Character, DEMA (Twenty One Pilots), Depression, Electrocution, Everyone Is Gay, Friendly Blurryface, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mind Control, Near Death Experiences, Neurodiversity, Nightmares, Nonbinary Character, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Puppets, Red Bird AU, Self-Harm, Torture, Trans Male Character, Trench Era, and ones at the beginning of each chapter, there will be more trigger warnings and stuff added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 19:31:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17331038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semi_automatic/pseuds/semi_automatic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/twenty_one_plants/pseuds/twenty_one_plants
Summary: What happens when you're one of the bad guys, the puppets with their mouths stuffed and faces covered and blurred?Taken in by the banditos, a single red bird is set free, breathing and humming and beating with life. So much life.





	'Cause You Are Love and I'm Alive

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warnings for death and electrocution

     It’s the sound of the only fire sputtering out, a last gasp for breath under the neon and the darkness. It’s a stifling. A smothering, more like. A diminishment. It isn’t the first time these birds have heard something like this but for some reason, this one makes his blood run cold. He wonders about the warmth of the hand he sees dangling over the side, quickly obscured by red cloaks. 

     The muffled screams seem to crawl under his skin. He keeps his gaze ahead, the birds standing quietly, all nine deathly still. Not a twitch in a finger, shoulders tight like puppet strings pulled too harsh. Wrapped around throats and hands until tangling. None of the birds seem to breathe. 

     There’s a harsh gasp from the one who has been brought in, a last cry for help from a choking vulture. He hears, repeated, a sharp cry, moving into screams of “No!  _ No! _ ” And he hears the struggle, useless as it is, the boys breathing growing more ragged and frightful by the second. A sickness settles in his stomach. He doesn’t turn around to watch. He knows the procedure already, having done it to his own victim years before. Silver wire wrapped around and around, digging into the skin of first the wrists and then the neck, the victim’s hands always shaking, their eyes always wide as a frightened animal. They can taste their fate on their tongues then, sour and burnt. The boy starts to cry, words stolen from his throat.

     The switch is pulled. A strangled scream as harsh neon white light fills the room, the kind of scream that gets into your bones and never leaves. He carries one under each rib, a victim that never left, reminded to him each time that he took a breath. He hears the convulsions, the muscles in the body tightening and releasing without control. The choking. He can feel the fear and desperation. It takes the boy almost thirty seconds to die - the final beat of his heart seems thunderous in a kind of silent way. The neon lights are shut off. The body falls limp and heavy, still twitching with the leftover electricity. But everything is fried, every synapse in his brain plucked and blown, every nerve like a treehouse burned to the ground and trapping him in it. 

     These kinds of sacrifices were not new to any of them. Each had, at least once, let someone’s life slip in their own fingers, felt that heaviness as everything leaves. The birds are unmoving. He twitches vaguely, a hand slightly reaching up to touch his own throat as he gulps.

     He hears, off to the side, a shudder of breath and looks over. A figure standing off in the corner, a flash of light from a knife he holds in his hands. The pink lines across his shirt and wrapped around his knee stand out against the grey of everything else. The figure’s eyes dart up towards the movement of him looking over, and they drop the knife. It clatters to the ground as the bishops begin to lift the limp body of the boy, obscuring the sound. 

     The birds file out after the bishops do, silent creatures, keeping low. But he lingers for half a second, overriding training, and darts to grab the knife dropped by the unwelcome visitor. It glints, red and black and white in the faint light of the room. The only colors he had ever seen, a mask obscuring his vision. A mask he could never pull off, blurring his expression and turning him into some kind of warped monster. He tucks the knife into his clothes quickly, following the other birds out of the room.

     The body will be buried in the outskirts of Dema, the circular gravesites, the neon headstones marking the place and leaving the person forgotten amongst each and every one of the others buried there. Countless people. The ones who weren’t fed to the vultures. It would be the job of one of the birds to dig the grave, bury the boy. The bishops dismiss the birds, save for the one who the body is passed off to, and the rest slink off to their place in the tower. Cramped, close quarters with small beds, everything grey and black and red. There is silence, as there always is, save for the vague shuffling. It’s always so quiet. His ears ring as he walks, feeling the knife pressed against his waistband, cold and heavy.

**Author's Note:**

> make sure to check out twenty_one_plants' work, "just show me what love looks like" as it is parallel with this work! also follow me on tumblr @regionaldreamers and my bf @ichorshark on ig!


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